


made and used and wasted

by thecitysmith



Category: Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Death in Childbirth, Multi, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-10-16 01:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17539928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecitysmith/pseuds/thecitysmith
Summary: (how are cities born?)





	1. London

A Celtic woman caught in difficult birth on the cusp of battle with invaders. Both she and the child left unburied as their people fled.

_(but this is my home!)_

An old thief, finally too slow, cut down outside the camp, the stolen purse scattering coins, dull gold in the bloodied night.

_(i had a good run. ha! let the gods take me if they can)_

The Roman soldier, who saw the other two dead. Who made sure it happened, with blood on his sword. Who was cut down when the mother’s people came back.

_(veni, vidi, vici. That’s how it works, isn’t it? This is our land, our home now. We won. I miss my family, but this is how to bring them glory, isn’t it? We won. We won. Why did they come back. I’m cold. I’m bleeding. Mother-)_

A contradiction.

A rainstorm.

And London was born with hair like dull gold coins.


	2. Prague

Libuše, the youngest of three sisters. A prophetess, she sent her other sons away; it would be a difficult birth; they didn’t need to see this. Her husband remains at her side as the blood soaks the sheets, her sister cries and can do nothing. But all will be well. Before she dies, Libuše has one last vision, and knows that she gave birth to two tonight. She dies smiling.

_(Vidím město veliké, jehož sláva hvězd se dotýkati bude.)_

A mason, humble, nameless, one of the many working on the castle and church. He wants to build a City of great spires and bridges, but knows that no one will listen to a poor old man who has nothing but dreams. The work is dangerous, and one day a stone slips from the battlements and his dreams are snuffed out once and for all.

_(but I believe that vision of a City will come, in time)_

Prague is slightly unusual in that her Warrior died first, before the other two. It’s a common story in Europe: Tribes travelling West, the Slavs coming in, someone had to die. After all, princesses and beauty and vision are not all a City needs. There must be blood, and pain, and war, too.

_(he looks back, and wonders what he’s fighting for)_

Finally, a sunset, orange light spilling out over the Vltava until the river seemed to be made of liquid fire.

Prague climbs out of the church crypts, and looks up at the stars.


	3. Tokyo

The learnèd man; he  
gathers dust in his study.  
No family mourns.

A poet finishes;  
blade a brush, his blood spilled ink.  
A warrior’s death.

The wife gains a son;  
the mistress lies dead beneath  
trees that blossom red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is right, though I cheated and used a fancy "learned" that's two syllables instead of one. Also apparently you're not supposed to use any similes or metaphors but whoops.


	4. San Francisco

Humans only know vaguely how Cities are born. Humans live there for a while, then a City comes out of the ground yeah? And then humans decide if the Not-Yet gets a Cityhood. Simple.

But Cities know. The three deaths are, often, untraceable. They weren’t even quickening in the earth until the last one dies, so they don’t even learn their (parents) sacrifices’ names. Unless another, older City somehow saw all three sacrifices and can tell them, it remains a mystery.

(New Orleans never knew the name of the slave that threw herself and her newborn baby overboard, to freedom, Moscow never met the soldier who killed & was killed by his brother and died with a rictus grin, weeping and snarling. Kisumu never met the dancing girl, her dusty feet flickering– but she has her eyes)

The one thing they do know is the act of nature. The breath and turn of the earth that births them from the ground. Storms, earthquakes, droughts. Vancouver born in a flood, Manaus under the shade of the growing trees, Warsaw in a fire (and again and again in fire), it’s the first thing they experience once they’re born. And they remember it.

They also talk about it. Often casually, (oh don’t talk to Hong Kong, he’s a total Lightning, you know what they’re like) like a zodiac for Cities. But sometimes the talk becomes more judgemental, or fearful. They don’t know why there are differences after all. Or what it means. Purely coincidental? Or are they attached to these other Cities scattered across the earth, born in the same way, bound together somehow? Is someone born in winter truly cold-hearted, is someone born at night really less trustworthy?

Prejudice can start for the most ridiculous of reasons.

San Francisco will tell you that she was much like her brothers and sisters, born into summer heat, or light on the water. Once, when she was feeling romantic, she told a lover she was born when golden flowers bloomed at her feet. 

She could never tell them the truth, about the creak of the earth, black and deep and twisting heavy inside, the cracking and crushing darkness, snuffing out more lives as she stepped into the light. 


	5. Worcester and Hereford

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Worcester Anon: If you want to do the thing, i offer my city (and maybe Hereford) (I don't know much about Hereford) (Worcester became a city in the seventh century this is exciting for me)

Hereford was made from the deaths of a grumpy scholar whose work was left unfinished, an old soldier who was too tired, and a farmer who gave birth when the river was overflowing and they couldn’t get help in time. He breathed with the creak of an apple tree’s branches growing thick and strong.

Worcester was born when an old witch gasped her last, when a girl too young for childbirth cried out, when a boy jumped into a fight trying to save his brother. She opened her grey eyes to face the matching skies, as snowdrops emerged from the frozen earth, their delicate heads nodding.


	6. Hollywood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> You've mentioned Hollywood probably being a seperate city from LA by this point. How were they Born?

car crash, overdose, suicide

fire creeping over the hills


	7. Florence

Beautiful Florence, born of three women.

A prostitute known for her beautiful red hair, a camp follower, who took many Roman soldiers into her bed, but only one into her heart. When her belly grew round, he left her. She gave birth alone in her tent, screaming and weeping and joyful all at once. Her blood as red as her hair.

(the man rejected the child, who died alone, elsewhere. he married a more suitable woman later, and had children with her, and forget the colour of his lover’s hair)

A Roman woman, with her hair white as snow. Just because women couldn’t speak in the senate didn’t mean they didn’t have influence. Her sharp, wicked mind, and the legion of men she tangled in her webs made certain of that. They said that by the time she died, sipping wine and surrounded by sycophants, she had the ear of the Emperor himself.

(that was probably why the wine was poisoned)

A fierce boy-whippet who’d had the misfortune of being born the wrong gender, in the wrong time. She looked to the Gods and found none to advise her, so she decided to carve out her own legend, cut her hair, and joined the ranks of soldiers under her brother’s name.

(She died within two weeks of being deployed, cut down by some savage in a battle so unimportant it never made it into the history books. Her body was burnt with a coin in her mouth, her name lost to time as soon as the smoke rose into the air.)

It was summer and the sun sunk into a horizon heavy and red.

And a City was born with a beautiful face, hair as red as blood, and a grudge. 


	8. Ys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> can you please tell us the birth of ys? sorry if this has been asked before

The mother killed two other people, then herself, to birth Ys.


	9. Atlantis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What about Atlantis, for that matter?

A woman trying to escape from the temple, screaming in agony in the alley behind it.

_(please- I had a life- I had a future - please)_

An old fisherman, too weak to get up in the morning, letting himself lie in the sun.

_(enough. let me sleep)_

A sailor who, according to all records, shouldn’t have died. There was no war on. There was no storm. It was a routine patrol. One day he went out into the sea, and then he didn’t come back.

_(can’t you hear that?)_

I’m sure you expect, now, a flood, or a tidal wave, or a storm at sea. But no, there was nothing. The sea was calm that night. The sky clear. And beneath the waves was the sound of singing.


	10. Hong Kong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> Birth of Hong Kong, please?

The warrior is a young man protecting his family, trying to give them time to escape, to cross the water, to flee the soldiers. He’s shot in the back, and that same water carries his body out to sea, red draining out under the night sky.

The mother feels too young to be one. She’d always been the youngest, the baby of the family that now gathers around her to urge her on, calling her good and strong and brave. She dies, bringing another baby girl into the world. Their cries mingle with hers

The eldest is not so old, he is merely the eldest of a large family, of little brothers and cousins and babies who cry and clamber over him. The adults are out and he should be locking the shutters against the coming storm but they’re all so hungry. He slips out instead, heading towards the shops, while all around him the trees shake and wind calls a warning. He promises them he’ll be back soon. He worries about what they’ll do while he’s gone.

lightning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  #that's hong kong #youth and bravery and hope in the face of impossibility #poor boy. brave man.


	11. Rome and New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #Old Rome and New York's births are #strangely enough #identical

a slave, a leader, a sacrifice

and an earthquake.


	12. Cardiff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> Birth of Cardiff? (Long Live The King.)

Humans, knights under the orders of a City far older than the land they walked on, those few faithful and courageous, who sacrificed their lives one by one, keeping their dying thoughts careful and determined as they mouthed the words, (home, home,  _home_ ), knowing exactly what their blood would bring-

-before they died, they saw it too, what would bring life to her, far above them, a spill of stars, tumbling through inky space, spinning and burning and silver-bright

(and Avalon watched; old and weary and hopeful)


	13. Athens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> birth of athens, please?

A young girl, once kept inside and told not to speak out, as all women were then. Who found one night of freedom with a boy with dark eyes. Now alone and disgraced, left thrashing and straining in a cold room, she presses her lips together, refusing to give them the satisfaction of hearing her scream. This was her choice. They may take the child from her as soon as it is born, and run her out of the house, out of the city, but this was her choice. She does not regret it.

_(let it live. let it be a boy. let it be free.)_

An elderly scholar, in mid-debate, who’d seen words be twisted. Who’d seen intellect turned to ignorance, and truth become something you could hand-pick, pluck or leave to rot in the service of your own ego. When all that was left of schools of thought was nationalism or cowardice, it was up to him to prick these false promises and arrogant fools, and deal with the pain in his arm in a moment

_(just another minute)_

A soldier. Doing his job and defending his home, stationed close to the borders where there had not been an expectation of threats, not that day. Being ambushed and killed by someone he thought was a friend.

_(what – no – not you. anyone but you)_

An olive tree, growing on a mountain path that leads to the very top.

Athens opens her grey eyes. She is born fully formed, barely a child at all, stepping from the twisted bark like a nymph dropping from the branches. One might think she’d stop and gaze over the land that would one day hold her city. But she has no time for that; there is work to do.

Athens strides down the path to speak to her people.


	14. Disneyland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> If blood's required for the birth of a City, how did Disneyland come to be personified?

Mother’s blood- pregnant woman gave premature birth on a visit. It was sad that she passed away, but she was surrounded by caring people and workers that she felt safe and “at home” enough that it counted.

Elder’s blood- elderly lady sat to watch her grandchildren on one of the rides. Passed away quietly on the bench, happy at seeing them so delighted by this place and characters that she too had grown up watching.

Warrior’s blood- security guard stabbed defending a break in at night. He should have called for back up, but he was just so *angry* at seeing a place like this attacked for no good reason.

Disneyland was born as the lights of the castle turned on and a thousand children gasping with delight. Not exactly a wonder of nature, some would say, but there is power in children’s dreams.


	15. Nottingham

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous whispered:  
> how do you think Nottingham was born?

in the rain between the leaves


End file.
